Photo exhibition on body image this Autumn

August 9, 2010

Central YMCA’s National Theatre Company, Y Touring, is working with young people from Bloomsbury-based organisations to create a photographic response to the subject of body image. The project, funded by the Wellcome Collection and Bloomsbury Festival organisers Hidden Cities, seeks to engage the participants in an open and honest creative discussion about how they and their peers feel about their own body image and how society makes them question the way they view their bodies.

A group of 15 young people will take part in exploratory workshops with body image experts looking at the subject and giving them a chance to have their voices heard. They will be given the skills to conduct interviews and workshops to other young people to get their peers’ opinions on the subject matter. Alongside will run a series of photography workshops so the young people will learn how to take visual responses reflecting young people’s views around body image.

The final images will be put together to create a photographic mosaic of the human body, half flesh, half skeleton, that document what young people feel about their bodies today. The mosaic and 15 key photographs will have a preview exhibition at the Wellcome Collection before forming an outdoor exhibition at the Bloomsbury Festival (October 22nd – 24th).

Central YMCA is a member of the Campaign for Body Confidence steering group.